Burning Bright

by Nick Petrie

  Faint flames began to flicker through the broken window openings.

  He watched the fire grow for a moment, then bent to the rocks for the remaining things he’d gathered. A black cloth sack in one hand and a new pistol in the other. Black greasy smoke rising up behind him, getting more substantial by the minute.

  She didn’t know what she would do, but she had to do something.

  10

  PETER

  He limped back from the Suburban, the truck driver’s pistol hanging heavy from one hand, the small black cloth drawstring sack in the other.

  June stood behind the shield of her car, her face pale and bleak, as if she’d peered through a window into another world, a world far different from the one she’d previously known to exist. She held something in her hand.

  “Are you okay?” he asked as he shoved the pistol into the back of his pants. His ribs were sore, his left lower leg a strong dull ache. The rain came in hard little drops, few in number but driven by the rising wind. “Where are you hurt?”

  She took a step away from the car, raised the compound bow and drew the string back. She’d found four broadhead arrows for the snap-in quiver. A fifth was nocked in place, pointed right at his chest. Her arms were steady.

  “Take it easy.” He put his hands up, the black drawstring sack hanging from one finger. “What’s going on?” He thought there was a real possibility that she would put a hole in him.

  “You killed those men.”

  “I did.” He was very tired, and his head hurt. “It seemed better than the alternative.”

  “Which was?”

  “Them killing me and taking you somewhere.”

  Her face softened a little at that. She said, “What’s in the bag?”

  Peter set the black sack down carefully on the half-crushed roof of the car. “Their wallets, the car registration, whatever I could find. If you want to figure out what’s going on, you need a place to start, right?”

  He didn’t tell her what the sack itself was. He’d seen them before. It was a hood. The kind of thing the CIA put over your head when they took you away. He’d found it in the glove compartment along with a gag and multiple sets of plastic restraints. Whatever she was into, it was serious.

  “Why did you set their car on fire?”

  “To get rid of their phones, anything that might have your name on it. Any DNA and fingerprints I left behind.” He could feel the heat on his back as the burn began to really take off. The gas was just the igniter. It was all the plastic padding and upholstery and insulation that would cook the Tahoe down to a skeleton. “Also to send a message.”

  “What’s the message?”

  He smiled gently. “Don’t fuck with June Cassidy.”

  Her arms drooped a little, and Peter began to feel better about his chances.

  “Listen,” he said. “I know what you’re going through. This is hard stuff to process. But we need to keep moving. The ammunition in that car is going to start to cook off any minute. And there are probably more of those guys out there somewhere. Maybe you could do me a favor and shoot me later?”

  She didn’t answer, but she let the tension off the bow. The faint outline of a smile ghosted across her face.

  He put his hands down, took the gun from his waistband, and dropped it and the black drawstring sack through his broken window onto the passenger seat. “I’m hoping your car will get us out of here. Can you drive?”

  She looked at the gun and the black sack, then back to Peter. “Yeah.” She pushed the bow through the broken back window, climbed up to the sunroof, and swung her legs through.

  Unbelievably, the Subaru started on the fourth try. Steam plumed from under the hood and a loud clattering sound came from somewhere in the engine compartment. There was nothing Peter could do about it, so he didn’t waste time trying to figure it out.

  It was a far better outcome than trying to get that logging truck turned around.

  So he limped ahead of the battered little car, scouting down the dry section of the riverbed for a way back up to the road, while June drove slowly behind, piloting around the larger rocks.

  The Subaru was rapidly approaching the end of its life, and they were still a long way from anywhere.

  Finally they came to a broad oxbow where the river had deposited sand and gravel on the inside bank, leaving a broad shelving path. The Subaru labored up the final steep shoulder, tires slipping on the soft vegetation, Peter pushing from behind with his leg on fire until they hit the packed gravel of the road.

  When the tires finally caught, he thought June might keep driving without him, but she stopped and waited without a word.

  Peter climbed into the passenger seat. She put the car in gear and pointed it downhill toward so-called civilization and the beginnings of some answers.

  • • •

  THE RAIN NEVER MATERIALIZED, and the clouds thinned and rose as they drove. June wasn’t talking, so Peter opened the black drawstring sack in his lap. Three wallets and the registration. The phones were all password-protected, plus they could be tracked, so he’d thrown them into the fire. He never found the handheld locator device they’d used to track June. There were only so many seconds he could spend inside that slaughterhouse.

  The wallets were clean and new and anonymous, although each had a driver’s license, a corporate credit card in the name SafeSecure, and federal IDs under different names, one from the Department of Defense and another from Homeland Security. They looked pretty good, but Peter was willing to bet that none of them were real. Each wallet also had four or five hundred dollars in mixed bills.

  So they had money for food and gas for the next few days, and a few ways to start looking into the hunters. As an investigative reporter, June would have better resources than Peter for that.

  The car was a problem. When the road changed from rutted gravel to uneven asphalt, June put it in third and the clattering got louder. A new noise came from under the car, the unnerving grind of nuts and bolts in an industrial blender. The plume of steam rising from under the hood seemed thinner, and Peter was pretty sure that wasn’t good news. June kept both hands on the wheel because the steering was unreliable at speeds over fifteen miles per hour. Something else wrong in the front end, maybe a tie rod, maybe the frame was bent, or both. The list was getting longer by the minute.

  But that little car kept running, either out of pure habit or just plain mechanical stubbornness, all the way to a narrow two-lane county highway and the tiny town of Bantam.

  It was just a few businesses grouped together like herd animals around a watering hole, more of a populated intersection than a town. June pulled behind a rambling single-story building with a wraparound porch that looked like it belonged on the set of an old Western movie. A large wooden sign announced PIZZA! BEER! LIVE MUSIC ON WEEKENDS!

  She drove to the far edge of the wide dirt parking lot to where the scrub growth began. They shared the lot with a Dumpster and a rusted-out Ford Econoline on cement blocks. When she turned off the ignition, the engine stopped with a definitive metallic clunk. Peter thought it unlikely that the little car would ever start again.

  The rear roof of the car had been partially crushed in the crash, and Peter had to pull open the rear hatch by force. He’d never get it closed. The pain in his lower left leg ranged from a dull ache to a sharp stab depending on how much weight he put on it. A walking stick would be helpful. They emptied the car of anything useful that would fit into their packs. They left the neat coils of climbing rope, but took her tent, stove, and sleeping bag, and all the water and energy bars they could carry. He put the pistol and the black drawstring sack in the pack she’d loaned him.

  She found a set of clothes in a duffel, wrinkled but clean. When she stepped into the scrub to change, Peter turned away to give her more privacy.

  He wasn’t sure if she would come back o
r just keep walking.

  She hadn’t said much of anything since they’d gotten back in the car. She was functional but distant, maybe a little disconnected. He hoped it was just shock. He hoped she’d come back. But she’d been through a long nightmare of unpleasant experiences. An abduction and escape, a car chase and wreck. She’d been shot at. She’d seen people killed.

  Peter was part of those experiences.

  Most people didn’t have much practice handling what she’d just been through.

  Those who had the practice? Well, he thought. We have our own problems.

  For example, he was out of the mountains and back at the edge of the man-made world again, even just this tiny little town, and he could already feel the static prickling at his spine.

  To push it away, he thought of what they would have to do next. Finding transportation was at the top of the list.

  He was fairly sure that the four men in the Tahoe were not the only people involved.

  And if there were more men and more black SUVs out there, they’d be coming.

  But to find another car, he needed to look less like an accident victim and more like a normal person. He took a dirty sock and a water bottle and started to wipe the dried blood off his face.

  He was relieved to hear June’s careful footsteps coming back through the scrub. When she came up beside him, he continued wiping at his face, keeping his movements slow and predictable. She took the water bottle from his hand, soaked her dirty Riot Grrrl T-shirt, and scrubbed at his bloody head with clinical force and precision until he looked presentable.

  “Can I help with your arm?” He pointed at her bloody elbow.

  “No.” She took the T-shirt and rinsed it out again, but wouldn’t meet his eye. She was staring at the back of the pizza place.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’m going to look for a car. Do you want to come with me?”

  She shook her head. He saw the clench in her jaw, the muscles knotted just beneath her freckled skin.

  He turned to follow her gaze.

  She wasn’t staring at the back of the pizza place.

  She was watching the intersection, a section of which was visible through a gap in the trees.

  Looking for the next group of men.

  “Will you wait here for me?” he asked. “I’m looking for your new car. I’ll try to find a good one. I’ll come back, I promise. Then you can tell me what you want to do next.”

  She didn’t answer, or take her eyes off the road. But she nodded.

  Peter figured she was trying to make a decision. About him.

  11

  He limped out into the little town. There wasn’t much to it. The commercial buildings were all clustered close to the intersection of the two-lane county highway and the secondary road they’d taken out of the mountains.

  Across from the pizza place was a modest hip-roofed shop with cheerful green paint and an elaborate multicolored sign for Esmerelda’s Grocery. A nameless beat-down bar with neon in the windows took up one corner of the intersection, two motorcycles and a dusty pickup out front. On the opposite corner stood a sagging frame building with wide overhangs, unpainted redwood siding, and a neatly lettered plank sign over the big front porch: HAPPY HIKE AND BIKE, in the same green as the grocery store. A few long driveways led to houses of various vintages, set back in the trees.

  He was hoping to see a car parked on the street with a FOR SALE sign stuck under the wiper. He didn’t want to start knocking on doors, although maybe he’d have to. It would make him far too memorable for any hunters.

  He looked up at the sky. The cloud cover was higher now, although the air was still thick and damp and he thought the rain would come back soon. They’d need a car quickly.

  Then he saw another big bird, or maybe the same bird he’d seen over the riverbed, just the shape of it in the lowest level of the clouds. It was some kind of raptor or vulture he didn’t recognize, floating silently in the mist. It looked bigger than it should. He wondered if he was within the range of the reintroduced California condor. Then the clouds shifted and the bird turned and he saw the golden glint again. Maybe a condor, he thought. With some kind of metallic tracking device on its wing or leg.

  He kept walking through town. The last building was an old cinderblock structure with a simple façade, a rusty steel roll-up door, and a tin roof. Another crisp hand-painted sign in the same green: ALBERTO’S REPAIR AND REBUILD. As Peter limped closer, he saw a small gravel parking lot with a half-dozen cars in a neat row with prices written on notecards taped to the inside of their windshields.

  Inventory ran to Detroit steel from the sixties and seventies. He saw a ’71 Plymouth Barracuda with an aggressive green flake paint job parked beside a beautiful red ’68 Mustang that looked like a hundred miles an hour standing still. A GTO, a Charger, a Galaxie 500, all of them classic muscle cars and together probably worth half a million dollars if they were mostly original and fully restored. He ran his hand over the silky flank of a sky-blue Chevelle SS with a white hood stripe. Peter was generally more of a truck guy, but for a moment, he wanted them all.

  This was what you could do with a few million dollars, he thought. Buy a lot of cool cars.

  Then you’d need a garage to hold them. And someone to maintain them. And a lawyer to handle your speeding tickets. Before you knew it, your cars had employees, which didn’t sound like much fun. Not at all the same as finding an old car in a barn and restoring it yourself.

  And none of these muscle machines were what he needed, anyway. He needed something less sexy, something invisible and reliable. He limped past the cars to another roll-up door set into the cinder-block side of the shop, this one open. Whitewashed walls, a raft of good bright lighting overhead, six repair bays with lifts, three of them occupied. Celia Cruz’s distinctive contralto purred from speakers in the back corner. He stood in the doorway but didn’t see anyone.

  The white static crackled up his brainstem. He didn’t want to go inside. “Anybody home?”

  “Gimme a minute,” a voice called out. Then a brown-skinned man with a long black and gray ponytail walked out, peeling thin blue gloves from his hands. Somewhere in his fifties, he had thick, hairy arms and a few days of stubble. He wore mechanic’s blues and steel-toed welder’s boots and wire-rimmed glasses with full-round earpieces hooked around big ears. “If you’re in a hurry, I prob’ly can’t help. I got about twenty good repairs ahead of you.”

  “I don’t need a repair, I need a car.”

  The mechanic’s face opened up in a broad smile. “Now you’re talking,” he said. “Those are my babies.” He put out his hand. “I’m Al. What do you like?”

  He had the long fingers of a piano player, but the strong raspy grip of a plumber. The word “HERMANOS” was spelled out with crude blue tattoos on his knuckles, one faded letter each. Hermanos was Spanish for brothers. It was a word Peter had heard a lot in the Marines.

  “I’m Peter, and I like all of them. They’re truly gorgeous. But I need something different.”

  The mechanic looked startled at this radical thought. Who’d want to drive anything but a vintage muscle car?

  Then he looked past Peter. “Hi, I’m Al,” he said, and put out his hand. “Are you with this guy?”

  June had come up behind Peter so quietly he hadn’t heard her. But she didn’t shake his hand, and she didn’t say anything.

  “This is June,” said Peter, before it could get completely awkward. “We had an accident.” Her fat lip had swollen further, and looked painful. She’d cleaned the blood off her elbow, but the many small cuts were vivid and pink at their edges. Her freckles stood out like reverse constellations in her pale face.

  Al looked from June to Peter, and back to June. She was half turned toward the highway, waiting like Peter for the next black SUV. Then Peter felt a tickle at his hairline. His head was starting to bleed again
. Al looked back as the first warm drop trickled down Peter’s forehead.

  “Hell, you people look like shit,” he said. “Let me get EMS on the horn. We got a volunteer outfit in Redway, only take them a half hour or so.”

  “No,” said Peter. “Please don’t. We’re fine. We just need a car.”

  “Seriously?” Then the implications caught up to him, and he put his hand on the door. “Listen, go bleed on somebody else. I don’t need your trouble. Get out of here before I call the cops.”

  “We won’t be any trouble,” Peter said, thinking of the Python .357 at the top of his pack. “We just want to buy a car. We can pay you. Cash.”

  Al turned to June. She cleared her throat. She looked at the highway, then back to Al. “Please,” she said quietly. Just one word, but it held a lot.

  The mechanic looked back at Peter. There was something substantial there behind the wire rims of his glasses. He was a serious man. Then he shook his head and sighed.

  “I have one rule,” he said. “I learned it from my abuelito. Be honest, that was his rule. Always honest. And I expect the same from the people I do business with. Or I don’t do business. So tell me the truth. Who are you and what are you doing here?”

  June was staring at the highway now. Peter looked, too, and saw a pair of black Ford Explorers, shiny and new and driving in close formation, turn off the two-lane to the secondary road, heading into the mountains.

  Peter said, “Can we go inside? I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

  “You first, then her.” Al stepped back to hold the door as they passed, and closed it behind them. The shop was bright and open, but Peter’s chest tightened anyway. As the static began to rise, his muscles would begin to cramp up. Then he’d start to sweat.

  “My office is there.” The mechanic pointed to a partitioned corner area. He stood five or six feet behind them and gestured for his guests to walk ahead. He’d scooped up an old-school tire iron and held it low and ready. Al was definitely a serious man.